Skirmish in Anti-Drug War: California vs. 'Doonesbury'

By TIM GOLDEN

Published: October 3, 1996

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 2—
There are drug wars, and there are drug wars. And then, it appears, there are the pretty-much-symbolic drug-related spats.

Marching bravely into the cultural swamp where Dan Quayle once bogged down in combat with the television single mother Murphy Brown, California's Attorney General, Dan Lungren, has taken his fight against the medical use of marijuana to Zonker Harris, the laid-back hero of the comic strip ''Doonesbury.''

In a series of cartoons being published this week, Mr. Harris (if he can be called that) muses sympathetically about a proposition on California's November ballot that would legalize the possession of marijuana for people suffering from illnesses like cancer and AIDS. And he gasps in horror upon hearing of the raid by state narcotics agents last August on an illegal San Francisco emporium where the drug was sold to thousands of people who said they were sick.

''What?'' Zonker demands. ''What country are we living in -- Germany? Russia? Idaho?''

Mr. Lungren, who ordered the raid that shut down the Cannabis Buyer's Club here, was not amused.

Hours after the strip appeared on Tuesday identifying him with some exaggeration as the man who sent ''100 heavily armed narcs'' into the marijuana bazaar with a battering ram, he called a news conference at the Capitol in Sacramento.

''No one should be laughing,'' said Mr. Lungren, asking newspapers in the state to censor the rest of the week's cartoons as a public service. ''Make no mistake about it. These strips contribute to the national wink-and-nod attitude toward drug use.'' Mr. Lungren, a politically ambitious Republican who has been an outspoken opponent of the ballot measure, heatedly denied that his own interests were mixed up in his pique at ''Doonesbury's'' author, Garry Trudeau.

The problem, he insisted, is a climate of growing political and social tolerance about drugs and its correlation with the recent rise in marijuana use among American teenagers.

''I appreciate political satire,'' the Attorney General said. ''But I think I know when a line has been crossed.''

Like the former Vice President, however, Mr. Lungren appeared to have underestimated his adversaries' capacity to make fun, at least of him. Asked his feelings about the dispute today, the founder of the defunct San Francisco buyers' club, Dennis Peron, said: ''I'm doing great! Great! It's too bad crybaby Lungren isn't doing as well as I am! I think he's just gone off the deep end. Waaa!''

Mr. Trudeau did not return telephone calls today asking for his thoughts on Mr. Lungren's complaints. An editor for Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes ''Doonesbury,'' said none of California's newspapers appeared to have heeded the Attorney General's request that they pull the cartoons.

''The strip is satire,'' said the editor, Elizabeth Andersen. ''He makes fun of patients who want marijuana for hay fever. He makes fun of Democrats and Republicans.''

Mr. Lungren's raid and a subsequent court injunction shut down Mr. Peron's busy, five-story outlet after two years in which the United States Attorney in San Francisco and the city's District Attorney had both declined to prosecute it. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors had also resolved that sales of marijuana for medical use should be considered of the ''lowest priority'' by the city's police, arguing that the drug eases the nausea and stimulates the appetite of some sick people.

But over a period of months, undercover state agents gathered evidence that the control of sales at the buyers' club was extremely loose, at best.

At his news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Lungren displayed blown-up photographs that he said showed teen-agers buying marijuana at the club, an accusation that Mr. Peron denied. State officials have also said that marijuana ''prescriptions'' were sometimes scrawled on napkins, that anyone complaining of a headache was generally served as a legitimate customer.

None of that, however, impressed the powers in San Francisco. Never minding the narcotics laws, the city's famously liberal District Attorney, Terence Hallinan, said the state had overstepped its authority by not consulting him before the raid. The Mayor, Willie Brown, compared Mr. Lungren's tactics to those of the Nazi Gestapo.

Although a smaller buyers' club was raided last month in West Los Angeles, others continue to operate in Oakland, Santa Cruz and Hayward, Mr. Peron said. And in San Francisco, a medical foundation has joined with several local churches to distribute small amounts of marijuana to patients who are now more carefully screened.

''I don't think this is a joke or anything,'' Mr. Hallinan said today, applying his standard contrarian view to Mr. Lungren's contretemps. ''But it seems strange that a politician like that would have such thin skin. This goes with the business. Compared to some of the things they've said about me---- ''

Photo/Cartoon: Attorney General Dan Lungren of California on Tuesday displayed an undercover photograph of a teen-ager smoking marijuana at the Cannabis Buyer's Club in San Francisco (Dick Schmidt/The Sacramento Bee) while defending himself against the ''Doonesbury'' comic strip (Universal Press Syndicate) for ordering a raid that shut the club.